“I’d love to be the first,” Julien Alfred said of the possibility of becoming the first Olympic medallist from the tiny Caribbean island of St Lucia — on Saturday she achieved that in style by winning the women’s 100 metres in Paris.
Getting to the top of the podium was not a smooth passage for the 23-year-old devout Christian, whose victory came in front of 69,000 spectators, just 110,000 less than the population of St Lucia.
At the age of 12, her father Julian Hamilton died.
Five years later, just before she won Youth Olympic Games 100m silver in Buenos Aires in 2018, her aunt Karen Alfred, who had helped bring her up, passed away.
“I’m sure he would have wished for me to get this medal and be here for this moment,” Alfred said at the time.
She pinpoints that silver medal as a turning point for her career.
“I think that was the beginning of something great,” she told Olympics.com.
“It influenced my choices in going to college, as well, so I think it was a really good experience for me.”
Even getting to that stage in Buenos Aires had been an ordeal for the future Olympic champion.
She was so rocked by Julian’s death she stepped away from athletics and two years later aged 14 decided to go to school in Jamaica, the home of her idol Usain Bolt, leaving behind her family.
“I did have tough times when I was 14,” she said earlier this week.